Persephone
Sitemap Persephone - Rapture Jail, Prison and Insane Asylum --- --- --- --- --- Persephone - A Cell with a View ... ''' : The glowey shit out the windows in Persephone, with the pretty swirly multicolored lightshow ... Calming effects for those disturbed inmates (at least that's what Sinclair 'sold' the idea on). It needs to be remembered that the Persephone facility/complex included the City's Insane Asylum (particularly needed after the 'upswing' of insanity following ADAM products being introduced in Rapture - a fact that Ryan was likely made aware of). --- --- --- Persephone was a Prison in Rapture. Allegedly built (in secret by Sinclair for the Rapture City Council) supposedly as a political gulag. It looks more like a place to warehouse criminally insane Splicers (an asylum), and to jail common criminals. Some kind of rehabilitation was supposed to be offered, and it is likely that it would be built to be as self-supporting as possible - AS WERE PRISONS OF THAT ERA (even without Ryan's Philosophy in effect). Some number of Sofia Lamb supporters (those which called for/acted for the overthrow of order and freedoms in Rapture) were sent there including Sofia Lamb herself (and in the game it is contrived that she manipulated many inmates there into joining her and possibly brainwashing them into her delusional philosophy). Note that its appearance is as seen MANY years after Ryan or Sinclair had anything to do with running the place. Inside is also some kind of Little Sister facility (which plays a part in the BS2 plot). In BioShock 2 there are 2 level maps for Persephone : Outer_Persephone Inner_Persephone * See Also Abyss --- --- --- '''Visiting Hours : Persephone Penal Facility - It also was Rapture's general Jail and Insane Asylum. It would have had many visiting lawyers/mental practioners/relatives/etc... accessing the facility. In any population you would have some number of those with criminal inclination, and Rapture would be like any other place. Some may even have thought that it would be a place of opportunity (like Fontaine). Seriously Ryan would NOT want to keep it a Secret - First to serve as a visible threat to those who might want to become 'outlaws' (which included non-life sentences for lesser crimes), and Second to be able to show the place where 'Exiles' went, instead of it being assumed 'disappeared' with some hidden execution of the major criminals incarcerated there. We are never told how many Prisoners there were serving sentences who would eventually come back from there (just like prisons usually work in our world). ELSE Why bother to have 'therapy' as shown in BS2 ? --- --- --- Splicer Pacification Project : Extraction of ADAM from Living Splicers (Those held in Persephone or even in detention jails while pending trials/etc...) to nullify their powers to make them less troublesome/dangerous. A blood replacement system. Suchong had the idea that Little Sisters could 'recycle' ADAM from the blood obtained. After proving the concept, someone else suggested that dead Splicers likewise were a source of ADAM (later desperately needed to fight against Atlas's Splicer Terrorists). This is one way to explain why Delta is shown to exist configured as a 'Big Daddy' so early, when Gatherers should really NOT exist yet. Being escorts and armored 'attendants' to "hold down" the Splicers while they got "The Treatment" (Something similar is done to recently captured Splicers in New Rapture, while 'The Cure' is administered to them.) --- --- --- Abyss : The Abyss does look like an underground cavern (or a big hole very steep sides - like a volcanoes magma tube). The stalactite formations are a bit weird (real ones form IN AIR). And to have that much huge rock hanging from the ceiling ... IT really doesn't work at that scale (maybe its just a big fake projection to mess with the inmates minds - Sinclair might have come up with something like that to save expense). - Looking at those buildings at Persephone (go out windows using the Console Cheats), shows a concrete monstrosity that would have made any Nazi proud to have as their secret base. --- --- --- I have located Persephone on the Southern edge of Rapture, just at the point where the seabed drops off precipitously (Note to gamemakers - HUGE caverns as you portray in the game DO NOT exist in the Real World, and despite it making a 'neat scene' for a game, it is about as real as the Easter Bunny - something contrived by lazy people making something illogical but to them is 'good enuf') --- --- --- Persephone - Secret ? But WAS it 'secret' ? It was seen on the Atlantic Express map, and even had an (unreachable) AE station indicated on the local map in Outer Persephone. Combined Prison, Jail, Insane Asylum (probably started when ADAM use started producing insanity and MORE violent uncontrollable citizens needed to be put someplace). Lawyers and family members (and such) would visit criminal inmates in preparation for their lesser criminal cases which didn't have 'full exile' as their penalty - and who would eventually return to Rapture. The psychiatrists and prison guards wouldn't LIVE at that facility, so had to be able to go home at night ... Most of the people in Rapture would know it was there, AND that it was a needed part of what kept their society in balance. Consider that Objectivism generally doesn't allow a Death Penalty, so the problem for Ryan is what to do with the the real miscreants (many of the 'political' prisoners were caught at and had been proselytized violent rebellion). He cant let them go back to the Surface to blab about "secret" Rapture. A proper solution would be : To create a second habitable site -- for permanent EXILE. Where the people sent there (who refused to live by Raptures Laws and Society - being outlaws) could then live as they pleased and support themselves as they might without disrupting the society back in Rapture. (Perhaps use some of the old construction facilities for this, like those mentioned in the Novel ...) Whether they all eventually killed each other wouldn't be most people's concern, as the outlaws sent there would have already shown they did not have to follow societies laws and so no longer had its protection (which is the original meaning of the word 'outlaw'). Unfortunately, that idea wasn't thought of (or understood) by the game writers -- We could have the same plot really with Sofia Lamb ruling THAT place - and no longer part of Rapture and follow the same story. The Department Store Prison in the 3rd game was something like that. It was certainly NOT like any real Prison, and with inmates 'running a-muck', should have been far more chaotic (and likely a place Atlas/Fontaine would have died the first moments he started to try to boss people around). - Note : Also that 'experimentation' on prisoners had commonly happened in the USA in the 40s/50s (prisons/jails) - as VOLUNTARY -- With 'time off' their sentences largely as their reward. (There is a poster suggesting this 'voluntary' thing to be seen in Persephone). So likely it wasn't a Soviet Style (or Nazi style) Operation, where the inmates INVOLUNTARILY were used for experiments (unwilling people generally make for quite ineffective experiments). Note also that : ADAM addicts, with their minds destroyed (and many with violently destructive behavior to others and themselves) would exist more and more in Rapture, and that it might be seen that converting them to Big Daddies to become useful in society might seem a good option (Note that Lobotomies where used on violently insane criminals in the USA also in the 30s 40s 50s - with chemicals and electroshock taking over in the 50s/60s). --- --- --- Goin Outa Their Heads - Persephone As A City Asylum : Real Statistic : Out of the US population, 1/248 were in State Mental Institutions (in US) ~1945 So ~40000(1958) peeps in Rapture = ~161 patients (if meeting the typical ratio) This of course was not including the ADAM related cases. Private asylums were very common (go look at Picture Websites about 'ruined places' and see how many were mental hospitals) and Rapture probably had a few. When the ADAM instabilities started happening in the mid 50s, then it is possible that the Persephone facility being built had a large section dedicated to that purpose, as well as being a consolidated Jail and Prison and Exile Place. Consider it might have been a much better/understandable game if Columbia was ONE BIG INSANE ASYLUM. --- --- --- Persephone 'Volunteers' - Carrot Rather Than the Stick (or Club) : I went back to look at all the posters on the walls (turned out there were fewer than I remember, the posters being advertisements for 'better treatment'). They seemed like they were emulating the thing done in real prisons/jails during that era : When they offered early release (and probably better treatment) to inmates who volunteered for some medical experiments (usually was some kind of drug testing and not conversion into a soul-less zombie mechanoid or gene twisted mutant). The poster with the bag of money at the inmates feet looks like it is implying the inmate is being paid, not handing his money over to get some 'sooner' (or better) treatment. I would figure with the ADAM-driven insanity, the early extreme cases would wind up in some facility (probably an Insane Asylum at Persephone, or whatever other facilities predated its creation) where they had to be 'warehoused' at public expense (families no doubt paid when they could at 'private' facilities). Criminally insane people would often have to be held in isolation, if not being completely restrained as well, so as not to hurt themselves. Look at the history of such places in that era, 'lobotomizing' of such patients was common - just like in the good ole USA back then, when a court would decide their disposition once someone was too insane (mentally incompetent) to decide for themselves their situation (not euthanized though). But someone would have to pay for it all, and in Rapture that would be a sticking point in such decisions. I suppose you could consider being 'pacified' and turned into a Big Daddy as equivalent to unending restraint, or mental obliteration via lobotomy (with the benefit of the inmate being made useful in society/paying for their own upkeep). Some (mentally competent) inmates with Life Sentences (remember this was also a general prison, not only an alleged 'gulag' for exiled Traitors and Seditionists, which the writers might have implied) who might voluntarily 'opt out' and volunteer for Big Daddification (it is also not really clear how much personality still remains after that conversion). Terminal patients (particularly indigent ones) might be further potential candidates. One other piece of evidence - all the verbiage of Lamb's followers "sacrifice" - of subjecting themselves to become 'test subjects'. "Sacrifice" is not generally defined as involuntary. That, I think, implies that the subjects still had to "volunteer" - even though there may be some coercion with the offers of 'better treatment' (carrot), and whatever 'convincing' Sofia Lamb (and her more true-believer sycophants) were able to use on her followers to get THEM to volunteer (earning HER advantages with the Prison authorities, apparently). A prison where it is KNOWN that many inmates are dragged off and never return would be very difficult to run, and require too large a staff to physically manhandle all the fearful inmates through every part of its operation. Thus volunteer programs. How many of such test programs did not really harm the candidates we aren't told, inmates coming back from the testing with little effect (there are many tests whichg affect the subject only minorly) would encourage further 'volunteers'. How many of Fontaine's test candidates in the early days were 'volunteers' ?? How many were unfortunates scooped up from the poorer more noisome sections of Rapture (like the Paupers Drop slum before Sinclair redeveloped it) ? Others may have been people who worked for him who complained about being cheated of their wages, or similar 'problem' people. --- --- --- --- --- . .